Once while ministering in Lexington, Kentucky, I tried to grab attention by announcing my next sermon: “Five People I Would Like to See Go to Hell.” Obviously, I wasn’t consigning anyone to eternal punishment, but I named five individuals I wished could see what hell is like and return to warn the rest of us.
A reporter heard about it, and a story appeared on the front page of the local newspaper. Half the congregation was amused; the other half was angry at me for creating such a stir.
The night I preached the sermon, another reporter was there. In the next day’s edition, his story was kind and did not question my sincerity, but he observed that such sensationalism does not enhance the influence of the church.
The rebuke was justly deserved, and I resolved never again to resort to such tactics to get a crowd.
-E. Ray Jones
First Christian Church
Clearwater, Florida
One Sunday morning I was preaching from John 13-14 on Jesus preparing a home for us in heaven. I described the Jewish customs of marriage and told how the potential bridegroom would seal the marriage covenant with the bride’s father and then leave for a period of time, often preparing living quarters for himself and his bride at his own father’s home.
I went on to explain that while the groom was gone, the bride would spend the time getting ready for the wedding, preparing her trousseau.
Well, instead of saying “trousseau,” the word came out “torso.” People began to snicker and poke their neighbors. I realized what I had said, but I was too intimidated to back up and correct myself. I went on and hoped they would forget.
They did not, nor have they allowed me to forget.
-Joseph M. Stowell
Highland Park Baptist Church
Southfield, Michigan
I once pastored a church that met in a renovated dance hall. Wanting to save money, our small fellowship used carpet remnants for the center aisle. Over the years, the seams began to loosen, and if you weren’t careful, your foot could catch.
My wife told me, “Honey, you should get those fixed before some elderly lady trips and falls.” Being a man of instantaneous action, I applied a procedure I had learned from my deacons. I tabled the issue.
A few weeks later before a Sunday morning service, as is my custom, I was meditating in my office at the rear of the church. Suddenly realizing I was a few minutes late, I hurried to the sanctuary and briskly walked up the center aisle.
As I reached the front, in full view of the congregation, my foot slipped under a loose seam, and I lunged forward. Fortunately, I caught my balance, but my toupee decided to embark on a journey of its own. I snatched it in midair, deposited it back on my head, and proceeded calmly and coolly to the pulpit.
When I turned around, however, I was greeted with mass hysteria. I had placed my toupee on sideways!
Besides the important lesson of listening to the cautions of your wife, I learned something else: If it’s not your own hair, don’t wear it.
-Jerry Lambert
First Assembly of God
Mansfield, Ohio
Once while preaching in Singapore I was invited to present the gospel to inmates at Chang Gi Prison and was told I would be riding there with a minister.
A man introduced himself as the minister’s assistant and escorted me to the air-conditioned, chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz. “Are you the assistant pastor?” I asked. He laughed and said no.
When I climbed into the back seat and met my host, I asked him if he were a Presbyterian minister. The chauffeur, the assistant, and the minister all laughed as he set me straight. “I am a minister of Parliament, and this is my bodyguard.”
-Mike MacIntosh
Horizon International Ministries
San Diego, California
The sermon was titled “Betting Losers and Folding Winners” and was about the way we often lose confidence when we have everything going for us.
The problem was not the title, nor the text, nor the subject. The problem was that I got so wrapped up in the sermon I lost touch with everything else, including the time. Not everyone else was so enthralled. The senior minister was spying his watch. The children squirmed. The young men saw visions-of getting out someday. The old men dreamed dreams-because they were asleep. Yet on I preached.
As the service ended well beyond noon, I still had not noticed the time. The sermon itself had lasted forty minutes, a l-o-n-g time in a suburban Presbyterian church.
In the coffee hour afterward, I was cornered by an airline pilot and a surgeon, both elders in the church. They looked at each other, then at me. “I don’t know exactly how to say this,” one began. “But winners who don’t know when to fold become losers.”
I wore a crimson blush for more days than I care to remember.
-Michael Jinkins
First Presbyterian Church
Itasca, Texas
While a student in Bible college, I was serving a small congregation in Egypt, Pennsylvania, and a young couple asked me to perform their wedding.
The small church was packed for the occasion as the bride and groom exchanged vows in what seemed to be a flawless ceremony. As we came to the climax of the service, the couple embraced, I pronounced them man and wife, and I introduced them to the guests as “Mr. and Mrs. John Smith”-the name clearly printed in my marriage manual.
Only later, when informed by one of the dear old saints, did I realize I had introduced them by the fictitious name.
-Russell C. Rosser
First Baptist Church
Flushing, New York
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